For YEARS I’ve been wanting to go hike the trails at Mont Cayamant. Finally, this summer, we made it.
Mont Cayamant is about 2 hours from Ottawa so for us it’s JUST on the cusp of what makes sense to drive for a day hike. And with our kids being so young it just didn’t feel worth it to drive up there for just a day.
So recently, we decided to drive up after work on a Friday and camp there at one of the primitive campsites they have available.
This blog post is about those campsites since it’s really hard to find information about them anywhere!
But of course I also wrote about the trail we hiked to the tower at Mont Cayamant and if you’d like to read about that instead you can click here.
View from the bottom of the tower at Mont Cayamant!
Getting There
The Parc du Mont Cayamant is in the municipality of Cayamant, a few hours north of Ottawa/Gatineau. You can use these coordinates to get there: 46.060664, -76.292109.
Not too far from the park there was a convenience store, a SAQ (where they sell alcohol), a restaurant, and a casse croute. We also stopped at 32 Chemin du Mont Cayamant and paid cash for firewood before entering the park.
It’s always best to buy firewood close to where you’re going to burn it because that way you know for sure you won’t be transporting any invasive species into a new environment.
And it’s important to never cut down wood for firewood. Not only does it have a negative impact on the forest but it can ruin the campsite for the next camper. And it’s not going to burn well anyways because it’ll still be green and full of moisture!
This sign let us know we were in the right spot for camping.
Look at Us, We’re Weekend Warriors!
The only information I was able to find online about the campsites at the Parc du Mont Cayamant was that there were 12 of them, they’re free, and they’re rustic.
So it felt like a bit of a gamble driving up late on a Friday night with our two kids- what if they were all full?
Turns out that wasn’t an issue at ALL, even though it was a beautiful day in mid-September when we went. We didn’t see a single other person in the park until the middle of the day on Saturday.
Driving into the park, we saw vehicle parking on our right hand side. There were two parking spots right across from the campsites with space for 4 cars each.
Walking our stuff into the campsite. And just generally being adorable!
Facilities
We parked and started exploring the campsites. There were two outhouses near the sites, to be shared by all the campers in the area. There were also two big garbage cans (locked, so no critters could get inside). There were no other facilities and no running water.
Looking around, we didn’t see 12 separate campsites. There were two distinct sites closer to the road that were really big and could definitely fit multiple tents. And then there were two campsites a bit closer to the lake that were smaller, but could still fit a couple of tents each. There were four distinct firepits.
The campsite closer to the road.
Our Campsite
We chose one closer to the water, because to get to those you have to walk through the sites closer to the road and we didn’t want people walking through our site as the kids were trying to get to sleep later. We only had to walk about 100 metres from the car to our campsite so setting up was pretty easy.
We didn’t hike the trail that branched off from these campsites, the Sentier du Campeur, and I have to wonder if there were more campsites along that trail, deeper in the forest.
Each site had a picnic table, and ours had a bit of a view out over Lac à Rondeau although we couldn’t actually reach the water and it didn’t look like great swimming.
Our campsite!
Visitors
We had a campfire and ate dinner before turning in for the night… and right before we fell asleep we had a visitor at our camp that sounded a LOT like a coyote.
Fortunately we keep a tidy campsite and all of our food was back in the car, so our coyote friend had no reason to stick around long.
In the morning we packed up before heading out to hike the Sentier de la Tour, and picked up a little extra garbage on our way out as there had been a few things left behind by previous campers.
If you go camping at the Parc du Mont Cayamant, I encourage you to leave it better than you found it too!
A campfire in the fall is the best.
